MK: What a piece of shit! I couldn’t believe that anyone would take that seriously. I was laughing my whole way through it, much to the annoyance of Rod Steiger, who took the whole thing very seriously. At the time, my agent proposed sort of a “one for me, one for them” policy. That was one for them.

AVC: Yet it was a big hit, in part because it was supposedly based on a true story.

MK: It was the crazy Christians who made it a hit. They wanted people to believe in the devil and possessions and haunted houses and all that hooey.

It's a testament to how good she is in Superman that the character becoming a parody of herself in Superman II is so embarrassing. And yet she still played the hell out of the role both times.posted by Gelatin at 12:17 PM on May 14 [4 favorites]

We still have a long way to go before mental illness is normalized, before health issues stop being tabloid fodder or the subject of celebrity gossip. Even beyond illness, at times it feels like being a woman isn’t even normalized yet. How can we eliminate the stigma of health when we can’t even eliminate the stigma of just existing? But it is the experiences of women like Kidder, and characters like Lois Lane, that crack the walls a bit more for the rest of us so that we can openly share our stories without judgment, without being reduced to crazy, without losing our careers.

Superman + Superman 2 have been on tv lately, so I’ve recently rewatched them and they are such lovely antidotes to the current movie iterations of the characters. Reeve and Kidder are both completely charming and the writing allows them to be so — it’s really refreshing after the boring grimdark cardboard-character reboots by Snyder.

I remember wondering recently why Kidder wasn’t a bigger star after those movies — or at least not in many more well-known movies. She was truly delightful.posted by mrmurbles at 12:27 PM on May 14 [9 favorites]

MK: There you go. I’ll have that inscribed on my damn grave. I still get stopped for being Lois Lane, and I’m 60 and have two grandchildren. So it’s kind of weird.

and on Superman II:

MK: Well, that wasn’t a bit—the parts we went back and shot with Richard Lester weren’t as much fun, because we were all pissed off that Donner had been fired. You can see it in our faces, where the tension is just… [Loud, emphatic disgusted sound.] Did you see Donner’s version of Superman II? Go see it. It’s so much better. It’s breathtaking. It’s so good. We would have finished it, except for a couple of scenes. I mean, it’s a far superior movie. So them firing Donner was such a betrayal to this family we’d constructed, to the script, to the notion of how it was being filmed, which was with great love and verisimilitude. We all really believed in it. And then Richard Lester, who’s a wonderful director and a very witty, delightful, charming guy, did it all kind of tongue-in-cheek and making fun of it as he did it, because I think he was slightly embarrassed to be making—Brits! He’s a Brit, you know—to be making a movie of an American cartoon character. So it was snide. Also, the producers wanted it done cheaply and fast, so it was done cheaply and fast. Three cameras at once. So all the love kind of went out, and thus all the air out of the balloon. So we were not very happy campers. And boy, did you ever see it in our faces. And you can tell which scenes in that were shot by Donner, and which weren’t. But they just released, a couple years ago, Donner’s version, which is so superior, it’s breathtaking. Go look at it. Oh, I’m so wonderful, too. God, I was heartbreaking. I thought, “Fuck, Kidder, you could have had an Oscar nomination.” I’m so good in Donner’s version, and I’m so bad in Lester’s.

MK: seriously. I was laughing my whole way through it, much to the annoyance of Rod Steiger, who took the whole thing very seriously. At the time, my agent proposed sort of a “one for me, one for them” policy. That was one for them.

And yet, given her subsequent history, it's reasonable to suspect she may have been battling unkillable demons of her own even back then.

I don't know; I found her performance in the first Superman movie ... unnerving.posted by jamjam at 12:39 PM on May 14

Geoff Barrow (of Portishead fame) tweeted this picture of Kidder today. Someone I read recently pointed out how well Superman succeeds not just as a superhero movie but as a screwball comedy, too. So much of that is due to Kidder. Margot Kidder: one of the good dead ones.posted by octobersurprise at 12:46 PM on May 14 [6 favorites]

.
I remember an article in the mid80s describing how she would put money in a jar for her daughter every time she cursed and had to explain to the kid that asinine wasn't a swear word.posted by brujita at 12:49 PM on May 14 [11 favorites]

Such a shame. I always loved that first Superman movie. I saw it in a mall theatre in Orlando Florida during a tornado when we were visiting my grandparents in 1978.
I met Margot and her daughter (or niece, I can't remember) in the late 80's when I was volunteering at the Canadian Film Centre and they had me doing yard work for a big industry party she was at.
Her sister Annie lives down the street from me and is a tireless advocate for public education here in Ontario.posted by chococat at 12:59 PM on May 14 [5 favorites]

When I was having a v. bad time, freshly post-highschool and directionless and wrestling with a lot of untreated mental biz, her breakdown and subsequent (so soon!) Barbara Walters interview happened and I got the *take your meds* message from someone I believed and understood.

Just last year, Mrs. Mosley and I went to a showing of "Superman" at the local indie theater that featured a Q&A with Kidder afterwords. Such an awesome lady. I'd like to think she and Carrie Fisher are palling around right now, maybe hosting some afterlife version of "The View".posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 1:34 PM on May 14 [19 favorites]

@TomTaylorMadeMost will be sharing pictures of Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. Instead, I thought I'd share this. #MargotKidder, handcuffed and smiling, being arrested at the White House for peacefully sitting against the potential environmental destruction of the Keystone pipeline.posted by popcassady at 1:55 PM on May 14 [32 favorites]

she was related to a good friend of mine, so I've heard stories over the years, pretty much all over the top.

One of my faves that I've never seen reported anywhere is the time she busted Charlton Heston's nose. I guess she was up for the female lead in one of those dodgy sci-fi epics the great orator was known for in the 1970s, and the final step was actually meeting him, seeing if they had chemistry. I guess they didn't. He said something chauvinist and disparaging. She pounded him.

The flying sequence, aka "Can You Read My Mind?" from Superman. When I think of Margot Kidder, this is the first thing that comes to mind. Way back before all the "Comics aren't just for kids any more" articles, this was one of the more genuinely grown-up superhero moments, and it doesn't seem the least bit corny nearly forty years later.

I agree with her on The Donner Cut. While I'll always have a soft spot for the theatrical release that she never had given that it's what I grew up with, the original vision was sooo much better. More better than the original Payback was relative to what eventually hit theaters.

Also, I have an undying love for her because she was willing to do Under A Killing Moon, which is a fun game despite the nearly cookie cutter pulp story. She and everyone else hit just the right balance of earnestness and self awareness that it worked very well.posted by wierdo at 3:36 PM on May 14 [2 favorites]

One of those few actors who was always totally present in a role; she was always 100% real no matter what kind of nonsense was going on. I remember being so sad that she'd lost her way, or perhaps more accurately that other people simply let her wander off. 69 is a pretty good run overall, but I think a lot of those years could have been more fulfilling for her if she'd had access to better care.posted by seanmpuckett at 3:59 PM on May 14 [1 favorite]

Junior year my high school got to watch Superman as the special assembly movie at the end of the year. Because of the "How big are you?" line, when we were seniors we got to watch The Apple Dumpling Gang as the special assembly movie at the end of the year.posted by lagomorphius at 6:02 PM on May 14 [1 favorite]

Also, to see just how right she was for Lois Lane, check out these screen tests for the role: Anne Archer, Lesley Ann Warren, Debra Raffin, Margot Kidder, Stockard Channing, and Susan Blakely.posted by tzikeh at 7:02 PM on May 14 [3 favorites]

Noel Neill is a nostalgic favorite, and Teri Hatcher had her moments occasionally, but Margot Kidder was the definitive screen portrayal of Lois Lane.

Just a footnote that this movie kicked off a remarkably resilient if largely unnoticed franchise. October last year saw the seventeenth Amityville movie, also the final release from the Weinstein Company: Amityville: The Awakening Total domestic box office gross: $742.00

If you have grasped the figures “seventeenth” and “seven hundred and forty-two” you have read correctly.

Anyway, Kidder was a delight in everything I ever saw her in, and had a tremendously winning chemistry with Chris Reeve. The Superman movies were the first time that a studio put real money and talent into a funnybook movie and while the quality dropped off the way many seventies franchises seemed to (consider the arc of the Jaws movies), I think without that gamble, we would not have had an overstuffed Infinity War recently. I wish I had seen her in more.

Amityville: The Awakening was, literally, in 10 theaters for 2 days and had, at time of release, been available for free on Google Play for two weeks. As much as that box office take is terrible, it's higher than I would have expected.posted by hanov3r at 9:14 AM on May 15

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